“Was it all inevitable, John?" Reeve was pushing his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress.Yes," I said. "I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.”

“I am reading Ian Rankins book Doors Open and am enjoying his dark Edinburgh narrative will rate soon once I have read it. I am also a fan of Jane Austen and have visited her Museum House in Chawton, Hampshire every year for the last three years. My Favourite book is Sense and Sensibility.”

“Rebus drank his coffee and felt his head spin. He was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller, and wished that he could turn to the last page and stop all his confusion, all the death and the madness and the spinning in his ears.”

“There are worse forms of prostitution than whoring.-Inspector John Rebus”

“His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life. ”

“This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.”

“Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.”